From around 1995, Tatters was a one-shot written by Steven Jones and drawn by me, published by Caliber Press. Tatters was kind of an odd duck of a comic, part gothic superhero book, part government conspiracy story, with some sci-fi elements and a dystopian future thrown in for good measure. But the book will always be known to me as (as far as I know) the first comic to model a character after Samuel L. Jackson. Pulp Fiction was hot at the time, and so I drew in Jackson’s and Travolta’s characters from the movie as the comic’s hard-luck hitmen Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, as a joke. (The characters are named Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. You can figure out what happens to them.)
As I understand it, editorial at Caliber wanted to avoid legal problems with celebrity likenesses, and so a goatee was added to the Travolta character, drawn directly onto my artwork. But Sam Jackson in all his Jules-ian glory remained unaltered, and therefore I think I can brag that I was the first to use Jackson as a comic character. In these days where nearly every mainstream comic has celebrity stunt casting, and where a Jackson-based character became such a mainstay of an entire comic book line that Jackson himself had to play the movie version of that character (I’m looking at you, Ultimate Nick Fury), I feel totally vindicated.
Maybe later I’ll put up a scan of the Jackson/Travolta caricatures, but right now, here’s the opening prologue of Tatters. Click on the thumbnails to see the larger scans, taken directly from my original art, inked entirely oldschool with a combination of brushes and Rapidograph pens, and lettered by hand. Pasteups by rubber cement.
(Sorry, I had to split pgs. 2 and 3 due to WordPress file size limitations. They’re meant to be seen as one piece.)
Here’s your Hulu embed of Saturday’s episode, seventeen days after airing, blah-blah-blah.
(Edited 11/14/09 to remove dead Hulu link.)
I think there are a handful of episodes left.
(Edited 11/3/09 to remove dead Hulu link.)
Hulu put this up a day late, which probably means it’ll be gone in 16 instead of 17 days. I did the opening “Miracle on a bike” sequence, which actually took about a week to storyboard, given the layers of background kids that had to be drawn. Funny that a week’s worth of labor ends up being about 15 seconds on the screen. Personally, I would have allowed the entire sequence a little more time to breathe, but it was the style of the show not to linger on anything. Besides, throughout my storyboarding career I’ve rarely seen an animated sequence that matched the timing I imagined when boarding same sequence. Except for maybe once or twice, usually what I’d see in my head never really matched up with the end result.
Also, they didn’t animate that rear view of Miracle as sexily as I would have liked, although I did get a kick out of the “halo” effect, which was not there on the board!
(Edited 10/30 to remove dead Hulu link.)
Here’s an early draft of my illo for the angry asian man/Secret Identities superhero contest, depicting winner Tiffany Namwong’s character Wildstyle. Drawn using Sketchbook. You can see my final result, and read Tiffany’s character description/backstory for Wildstyle, at either the angry asian man or Secret Identities blogs.
Here’s the Hulu embed for last night’s Sit Down Shut Up. It’ll only be up for 17 days, so watch it while you can.
(Edited 10/19 to remove dead Hulu link.)
An announcement coming soon.
Apologies to Saul Bass. Rose Madder is © 2009 A.L. Baroza.
Hilariously labeled at Hulu as Season 2, Episode 1. Don’t be fooled, Fox is just burning off the remaining 9 episodes that didn’t air from the initial 13-episode order. It’s still cancelled. And since these episodes will only be up at Hulu for 17 days after their inital air date, enjoy while you can. If you’re prone to enjoying Sit Down Shut Up, that is.
(Edited 9/30/09 to remove dead Hulu link.)
I dunno, this guy just called out for a graphic, logo-like approach, like Colonel Sanders or the Pep Boys. Drawn with Sketchbook.
This was my cover to Slave Labor’s Tales From The Heart #11, from 1994, painted in Dr. Martin’s watercolor dyes, with probably a little bit of guache, if I remember right. I was grateful to publisher Dan Vado for allowing me to do the cover to the final issue, following earlier covers by the likes of Brent Anderson and Charles Vess. It really was an honor.
Tales was the true-life adventures of a college-aged woman’s stint as a Peace Corps volunteer in the Central African Republic, written by Cindy Goff and Rafael Nieves. A little ahead of its time, the series never generated a lot of attention or sales, although it did receive a fair amount of critical acclaim and managed to generate two graphic novels from the Marvel/Epic imprint (which I wasn’t involved with).
I was brought in at issue #7 after original artist Seitu Hayden left the book. Unfortunately, my work in the second half of the run, issues #8-#11, was never collected in trade. Working on the series was really one of the great honors of my teeny-tiny comics career, and I’d jump back into it without hesitation if Cindy and Rafe wanted to pick it up again.
